The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories. W. C. Scully

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СКАЧАТЬ Mahlokoza had occupied. Little Gqomisa had been kept out of the way whilst the terrible preparations described had been carried out.

      The huts at the “great place” were arranged in the form of a large crescent, with the cattle kraal midway between the points. The old chief’s hut had been in the middle of the curve. After his death, old Dogolwana had taken possession of the huts near the right-hand point. Those huts towards the middle of the curve were uninhabited, being used as corn stores. Thus, no one dwelt nearer to the hut where the wretched victims lay bound awaiting their doom than the women and boys occupying the huts at the left-hand point, beyond the cattle kraal.

      As soon as darkness fell, old Dogolwana and the women barred the door of the hut which they occupied securely on the inside, and sat in grim silence awaiting developments. Dogolwana sat listening close to the wicker door. After waiting thus for some hours he heard stealthy footsteps approaching, and then some one endeavoured to open the door. Then Songoza whispered:

      “Philip—Philip, open—it is I.”

      The women snored loudly and Dogolwana sat mute and rigid. After calling Philip’s name several times in a low voice, and obtaining no answer, Songoza crept away. Going softly to the door of the other hut, he examined the fastenings, which satisfied him that Philip had performed his share of the contract. He then stole away on tip-toe until he reached the other side of the hut in which Dogolwana was. Then he sat down and pulled out a flint, steel, and tinder-box.

      Old Dogolwana and the women could hear the low click, click of the steel on the flint through the “wattle and daub” wall of the hut.

      The touchwood soon ignited, so Songoza placed it in the curve of a doubled wisp of dry grass, and then he ran quickly over to the hut which contained his brother, his wife, and his two sons, one being the only creature that had ever awakened a spark of love in his cold and cruel heart.

      The wisp of grass quickly ignited, and with it Songoza ran around the hut, firing the overhanging eaves every few feet. He then rushed into the forest. The hut was old and as dry as tinder. The roaring flames shot up instantly, and within a quarter of an hour the glowing roof sank down with a thud between the blazing walls.

      About an hour afterwards Dogolwana again heard some one trying to open the door.

      “Who is there?” he called out, his voice sounding muffled through the blanket which he had drawn over his head.

      “Open the door, Philip; it is I, Songoza.”

      “My chief,” replied Dogolwana; “Philip, with your wife and children, is sleeping in the next hut on the left.”

      Songoza gave one frightful shriek, and rushed forth as if driven by fiends.

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